Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Toys Rn't Us, and that's an order

Unlike the wholesale clothes markets near the Beijing Zoo, which were
given a place to relocate to, no alternative location has been arranged
for the hundreds of sellers at the [Hongqiao Tianle] toy market to continue their business
after October.

"We don't know where they'll be moved to and it's
not our responsibility to relocate them," said an anonymous staffer in
the market's management office. "We just follow government's orders."

And the government disapproves of toys?

Over the past three years, many markets in Beijing have been moved out
of the city to Hebei Province or closed down completely, including those
near the zoo and Dahongmen areas. In earlier August, another 350
clothes sellers at the Tianhaocheng Market near the zoo were moved. The
building is set to be renovated and turned into a new, high technology
industries incubator.According to a Beijing Times report in
January, Wang Zhonghua, vice district mayor of Dongcheng district, said
the toy market's closure was not intended to drive out the toy sellers.
Rather, the intention was to upgrade the industry infrastructure in
Beijing to introduce more high-tech and low-carbon enterprises, which is
in line with an international metropolis and the capital's future
development.

Like the Yankees;

According to Jiang San'geng, vice president of the
Academy of Metropolis Economic and Social Development at Capital
University of Economics and Business, it is a good move for Beijing to
"get thinner" by optimizing the core functions of the capital, including
getting rid of wholesale markets selling low-quality products."We should learn from countries like the US," Jiang told thepaper.cn in July. "In
Washington DC, there are not many industries and enterprises, which
avoid industrial agglomeration and related population expansion."